Evangelist
by Sa Rart
Summary: She has endured for centuries. She has seen nightmares, battled legends; she has been to the depths of hell and had fallen from the gates of paradise. And yet nothing had ever hurt her so deeply as her captivity in paradise. On the darkest of nights, there is no dawn; there is merely twilight.


Sometimes, she would dream. Sometimes, see just a flicker of red hair and flaming eyes, and her little fists ball up in rage and frustration at the cocky grin he wears perpetually across his face. And she would smell the onions and the leeks, and know, within the sickening pit of her stomach, that something had gone horribly wrong.

And, sometimes, the metallic maid would find her there, sitting up in her bed, little girl's eyes narrowed into slits of rage, catlike – but somehow more like those of the girl that she might have once been, far away, long ago.

"Master? Are you all right?

And, sometimes, she would look up, a slight frown creasing her forehead, and in a voice like the lost little girl she might have been, she would answer, "I… was just…" And she would stare blankly, trying to remember, trying to see, trying to feel what brought her such sadness, such happiness, such pain.

And then the moment would be gone, and the slow sadistic smile would creep across her face, and she would gleefully seize her servant's head and twist it in circles three times before she would rearrange her features into a scowl and stride out the door, bag slung casually across her shoulders.

And sometimes, she would stop, for the briefest moment, and listen, for a single moment, to the sound of the wind and the laughter of children and the sound of music in the distance.

But perhaps it was only an echo. An echo of what might have been.

She was floating, suspended in time, in space, in reality. She was immortal. She was six hundred and fifty four, and she was unaging all the same. So old, so young.

"Maybe you'll learn something," he had said with a wink, and cracked up as she growled and did her best to twist his head off his shoulders. For all the good it did her.

So it had been, for fifteen years. She was lost in time, drifting, alternating between happy and angry and mournful and musing at a moment's whim. So often, she would curse the man who had dared cast such a fate upon her – but just as often, she would wipe a silent tear from undying eyes, and, if asked, blame it upon the sunlight. But they didn't ask often, and even when they did, the only person she would try to explain away to was herself.

She remembers, in a lonely night at a table full of food that could not sate her hunger, how she had followed obediently in his footsteps one day, and he had turned around and asked her what was wrong – and she had fired back, with passion.

_I wasn't doing anything!_

And he had grinned, shaking shaggy red-brown hair from his face. _That was why I asked._

And, suddenly, he wasn't trying to make her follow him to the Academy, he was trying to make her stop following, talking to him, and she wouldn't – she couldn't – because he –

_Did you love him? _Chachamaru had asked once, when she was all of a month old, when she hardly knew what life was, let alone love or hate or pain.

_What the hell? He left me, he bound me, he defeated me, the worthless trash! He tricked me! When I find him, I'll flay him, I'll make him sorry he ever left me behind, I'll rip his head from his shoulders and feed it to the dolls – _

_Why are you angry that he left you behind?_ There was no attempt to catch her in a moment of weakness, there was no malice, there was no anger – just honest curiosity in those metallic eyes.

And, after a long moment, she could find nothing to say.

* * *

><p>Walking, weeping, wandering, waiting – she was always waiting for him, because he had told her. He had told her he would be back. That made it all worthwhile. The man she had loved was a man of his word, and so she knew that he would be back. And she had even worked, doing homework, studying for tests, pretending to herself that it was important. She had excelled, because she was waiting for him. She was going to show him that she could be a person that would live in the light – that she could improve – she could care – she could love –<p>

But he never came back, and bitterness coiled like a serpent around her dead heart. And the whisper of the darkness and the night crept into her unquiet soul, seeping in through the tears that would tremble at the ends of her little doll like eyes, and the memories of anguish and pain and fear and anger and terror and hate grew like a seed of darkness within the depths of her soul, until they choked what little green had remained.

And still, she waited.

Time stretched on. Years went by. Sometimes, she blinked, and it seemed that whole months had passed – and yet sometimes, the seconds would become decades, yawning gaps that time swam through at its own pace, unhurried by her yearnings.

They were so young, the pathetic fools, the shallow-minded spoiled brats that stank of youth and happiness and freedom. They talked about sports and grades and clubs and friends and boyfriends, sometimes – trivial things that made her scoff and laugh in disbelieving incredulity at the same time. They talked about life beyond the school, sometimes, and she silently fumed, cursing Nagi with a whisper of anger and hatred and happiness that coiled together deep within her crying heart.

Sometimes, they talked of how hard their lives were, joking seriously about suicide and death and hatred, and fury rose in her burning heart as she listened.

_My parents are going to kill me if I fail this test._

I'm_ going to kill myself if I fail this test._

They had giggled as they talked, as though they had said something _funny_, and she had stared, incomprehensive, furious, pits of flame bubbling from her stomach.

_It's high school. We know what that feeling of suffering – it's second nature – _

And perhaps she spoke to them, fury crashing over her like a wave as they turned to walk away – or perhaps simply to herself.

_You know what it feels like to suffer?_

There is no _feeling_ in suffering.

There is only pain. There is only suffering. It is not a feeling. It is your reality. You _understand_? You know nothing.

You know _nothing_ of pain, when death itself is a mercy, an unspoken, wordless, sweet nothingness, free of the love and the caring and the hope and the kindness and all of the sweet pleasures that become the chains of lightning cracking across bare shoulders, the searing whip of flames, the freezing rods of silence beneath bare feet, the molten destruction that pours down your bloody throat, the icy stillness of the water hissing through the holes that pierce your body, the inescapable, undeniable, unforgiving hellish suffering created by a burning paradise.

There is only pain.

For the first time, you see it, with your waking eyes, finally open to the true nature of the world, the unforgiving world that claims you, consumes you, even as the world is twisted, warped, mutated – and now you know pain at last, as everything and everyone you loved and trusted burns in the hellfire that you brought to them, and the truth and the lies of the world swirl into the nothingness of the abyss that awaits you with the cold welcoming arms of death – but you cannot reach it, because you are held back by the sinless dreams of all that you thought that you once dreamed.

Your parents will _kill _you, little girl?

You have no idea what you're saying. You have no _idea_ what it is like to run to them, sobbing, crying, begging for help, for someone to help you, to make you better, because you are a child who loves your mother and father! You have no idea what it is to have them recoil, to have your father swing at you with an _axe_, face twisted in horror and fear and rage, to have your mother scream and jump through a window rather than see your face! You do not know, you have never known, you will never know, _you have no idea_! Go, little girl, _run_! Run from your home, run to the village, watch in silent agony as they surround you with pitchforks and torches, people you have known and loved and admired and adored all of your life! When you are thrown into the well where you once drew water, your own _brother _sends an arrow through your eye, when you are put to the stake and burned, when a hundred wooden nails pin you ten feet above the ground for _weeks_ –

And then, when your pain and terror becomes rage, and you see the face you once thought of as a friend, who loved you, who you loved, that would do anything, for you that you would do anything for – when he comes to you with a smile on his face, there is no pain.

There is cold hatred.

And God himself puts words upon your lips, and your body breaks apart and reforms, tattered and bloody and torn and covered in mud and water and fire, and you smile for the first time in decades –

And hunt him through the night, words of ice on your lips, words of darkness upon your fingertips –

And realize just what your suffering has made you become.

You are the prophet of evil, the puppet of doom, the avatar of all darkness, the evangelist from the shadows –

And you realize you bring destruction with you wherever you go. A touch of your finger can kill.

And try to die, and find that you cannot, that the flame and the sword and the cliffs and the water are unwilling to claim you, to find that you are unworthy of the only right that all possess, that Death himself will not reach from his black horse, and you are alone, you are alone and the pain will never go away –

never –

_You killed with hatred in your heart – _

never ever go away –

* * *

><p>Emptiness. Alone. She is alone again, where not even marionettes nor robots nor dolls nor human hearts dare enter.<p>

All she knows – all she ever knew – is that she is suffering, and it will never stop –

Because she waited –

Because she trusted –

Because she hoped –

Because she dreamed –

_that life is love and trust and dreams and hopes – _

_because life is lost love and broken trust and forgotten dreams and shattered hopes –_

because i -

_Fin._


End file.
